- Bitcoin mining firm Marathon Digital mined an invalid Bitcoin (BTC) block during an “experiment” aimed at optimizing its operations.
- The company confirmed that it uses a small percentage of its hash rate for these experiments and emphasized that they were not trying to alter the network in any way.
- The error was quickly corrected once Marathon noticed the invalid block.
Marathon stated that the bug, which arose from its internal development environment, was unrelated to its Bitcoin production pool or Bitcoin Core.
The incident occurred on September 26 at 9:42 pm UTC on block 809478.
- Several Bitcoin developers attributed the invalid block to a “transaction ordering issue.”
- Bitcoin analyst Dylan LeClair suggested that Marathon should have conducted this experiment on a testnet before attempting it on Bitcoin’s mainnet.
- In reflection, Marathon said that Bitcoin “functioned exactly as designed” by excluding the invalid block.
Marathon’s share price fell 2.91% to $8.01 during opening hours on September 27.
Coinpostman reached out to Marathon for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
